CNA Staff, Dec 14, 2024 / 06:00 am
In the waning months of World War II, deep in the heart of Nazi Germany, a Catholic priest prayed in a prison cell, awaiting trial and a likely death sentence. The charges against him were false, and his trial, which began soon after Christmas, would prove to be a sham.
As you might expect, all this made for a somewhat subdued Advent for Father Alfred Delp — a German Jesuit whose meditations on Advent, written from prison and published after his death, continue to provide inspiration to readers. (“Prison Meditations of Father Delp” was published after his death.)
The young priest was executed the following February, in 1945.
Even before his ordeal in prison, Delp had preached and written extensively on Advent, even exhorting his people that “all of life is Advent” — a constant state of waiting, journeying, and longing for something greater. Christians, Delp said, should be actively preparing for the heavenly realities that are to come.
“To wait in faith, for the fruitfulness of the silent earth and for the abundance of the coming harvest, means to understand the world — even this world — in Advent,” he later wrote from his prison cell.
Delp was born in Mannheim, Germany, on Sept. 15, 1907. He was baptized Catholic but raised in a Lutheran home. The outbreak of World War I in 1914 saw his father drafted, and it shaped the younger Delp’s view on violence and the fragility of human life.
At the age of 14, Delp made the decision to leave the Lutheran church and received the Catholic sacraments. Postwar Germany was now in turmoil, creating fertile ground for extremist ideologies like Nazism to arise.
Adolph Hitler was named chancellor of Germany in early 1933 and by that summer the Nazi Party was the only officially recognized political party in the country. As Nazism started to take hold, religious freedom came under attack, freedom of speech was suppressed, and numerous groups, particularly Jews, were persecuted.
Delp entered the Society of Jesus in 1926 and was ordained in 1937, just two years before the Nazi invasion of Poland, which kicked off World War II in Europe. As a priest, Delp found himself in increasing danger but used his sermons and writings to continue to resist the Nazi’s ideology and rule, even cleverly twisting the words of the Nazi’s own propaganda against them by subverting the language of oppression.
In one of his many sermons where he criticized Nazi society, he lamented that so many people had abandoned the idea of “a divine homeland to which to emigrate … they are ultimately God themselves, and there is no God above them.” He exhorted his fellow believers that even small acts of courage can make a difference.
He spent several years working for a Jesuit newspaper in Germany until the Nazis shut it down, and he became rector of a parish in Munich. Soon after, in 1942, Delp joined the “Kreisau Circle” — a group of about two dozen dissidents who sought to plan for a new, Christianity-guided Germany after the inevitable fall of Hitler’s regime.
Delp served as the group’s spiritual adviser, bringing with him a deep understanding of Catholic social teaching.
Delp and two other Jesuit members of the circle were able to fly under the Nazis’ radar for a few years until an infamous failed attempt on Hitler’s life by some of his high commanders. Despite having nothing to do with the failed plot, members of the circle were rounded up as the Nazis worked to arrest anyone with ties to the resistance. Delp could have gone into hiding but chose not to.
Delp was not the only German priest killed for his resistance to Nazi ideology. Father Max Josef Metzger was executed for his peace activism and ecumenical work less than a year before Delp was killed. (Metzger was beatified last month in Freiburg, Germany.)
After Delp’s arrest in July 1944, he was taken to Berlin where he was interrogated and tortured for several weeks. In September, he was sent to a prison in Berlin to await his trial. It was there that he wrote his famous reflections, which women who were in charge of Delp’s laundry then smuggled out of the prison, sending them to his most trusted friends back in Munich.
Delp’s long Advent
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“When I pace back and forth in my cell, three steps forward and three steps back, hands in irons, ahead of me an unknown destiny, I understand very differently than before those ancient promises of the coming Lord who will redeem us and set us free,” Delp wrote in one of his December 1944 Advent reflections.
“So much courage needs strengthening; so much despair needs comforting; so much hardship needs a gentle hand and an illuminating interpretation; so much loneliness cries out for a liberating word; so much loss and pain seek a spiritual meaning.”
Delp offered profound meditations on hope in his writings, despite his acute awareness — incarcerated as he was — of the darkness of the present time in Germany and in the world at large.
“Life happens within a greater context than man can cope with or understand. Life brings greater burdens and bears a richer cargo than we can cope with, comprehend, or manage alone,” he wrote.
“There is no reason to lose heart or give up and be depressed. Instead this is a time for confidence and for tirelessly calling on God … His nearness is as intimate as our longing is genuine. His mercy is as great as our call to him is earnest. His liberation is as near and effective as our faith in him and in his coming is unshaken and unshakable. That’s the truth!”
Delp was acutely aware that faith often requires a walk through darkness and uncertainty but doing so in relationship with God is the path to joy, regardless of one’s external circumstances. His convictions shine through in his meditation for the third Sunday of Advent, which is designated Gaudete (“rejoice”) Sunday in the Church.
“Only in God is man fully capable of life. Without him, over time, we become sick. This sickness attacks our joy and our capability for joy,” he wrote from prison.
In his reflection on the Vigil of Christmas, Delp observed that the “harshness and coldness of life have hit us with a previously unimaginable force” on that bitter — yet still blessed — Christmas in the midst of war and oppression.
“We should not avoid the burdens God gives us. They lead us into the blessing of God,” he wrote.
‘The coming harvest’
Two days after the feast of the Epiphany in 1945, Delp’s trial finally began under a judge described as a “fanatical priest-hater.” Delp was summarily sentenced to death, despite having prepared for his trial, apparently laboring under the impression that it would be fair. Instead, he faced a kangaroo court designed to project Nazi power.
In most cases, execution immediately followed a death sentence, but Delp was instead sent back to his prison cell. In the two weeks that followed, he wrote several more meditations, including one on the Lord’s Prayer and one on the Litany of the Sacred Heart.
He stopped writing in January after hearing news of the executions of several other members of the Kreisau Circle as well as news of the arrest of his provincial superior.
After his long Advent of “waiting in faith,” Delp finally experienced the “abundance of the coming harvest” when on Feb. 2, 1945, he was hanged and his ashes scattered to the wind. He was 37.
“The world is more than its burden, and life is more than the sum of its gray days. The golden threads of the genuine reality are already shining through everywhere,” Delp wrote in his prison reflections.
“Let us know this, and let us, ourselves, be comforting messengers. Hope grows through the one who is himself a person of the hope and the promise.”
Jonah McKeown is a staff writer and podcast producer for Catholic News Agency. He holds a Master’s Degree from the University of Missouri School of Journalism and has worked as a writer, as a producer for public radio, and as a videographer. He is based in St. Louis.
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